The Summer I Died: A Thriller (28 page)

CHAPTER 24

I was halfway across the lawn when I looked back and saw Skinny Man coming at me with the hand ax. With the wound in my leg I wasn’t able to run as fast as I needed to and he was gaining on me, either used to the pain in his leg or so afraid of what would happen if I got away he didn’t care. By the time I reached the street he was nearly on top of me, swinging the bloodstained blade at my head. I fell to the cement and rolled out of the way, rolling myself back onto my feet and swinging my fists at him. Again, he tried to play whack-a-mole with my brain, but I managed to get my arms up under his and deflect the blow, our forearms smashing into each other. I kicked at him and he jumped back, putting his weight on his bad leg, which stopped him for a second.

“
Stop that crying,
”
he told me.
“
If you’re going to act like some fucking superhero least you could do is play the part.
”

I hadn’t even realized I was crying; I was too intent on not dying to notice what was going on physically. But as soon as he said it I realized my face was awash in tears. My body was shaking and my legs felt deflated. In front of me, the shirtless, bloodied madman was smiling like he’d released the frightened child inside of me.

Frightened yes, child no.

“
Where you gonna go?
”
he asked.
“
Nowhere you can run I can’t find you. Butch is a good tracker; he’ll find you
in a heartbeat. Best if you just came back over here and took your medicine like a man. In case you forgot, I know where you live, mama’s boy.
”

I had forgotten that he still had my driver’s license, that he knew where I lived. Could I make it to Bobtail before he drove to my parent’s house and killed them? Or would he pack up and disappear for a long time, only to resurface ten years from now on my front porch, his little ax in his belt, a new pair of dogs at his heels?

It was driving me mad. He had all his angles covered, knew all the ways to defeat his victim even when he wasn’t around.

“
You gonna kill my family like you killed yours!
”
I screamed.

He stayed back and replied,
“
Wasn’t me, mama’s boy, I just follow directions, and besides, they were bad. Always snooping in my stuff, nosing around where they shouldn’t be, trying to steal things. That little bitch was trying to steal my soul, sell it to the highest bidder. Kids are the devil’s minions, ya know. But she learned right
from wrong when I dragged her behind my truck till her face came off. Yeah, she knew not to do bad things then, with her eyes smeared on the road.
”

“
You’re fucking crazy!’

“
Get back here! Don’t make me drive and pick up y
e
r mama, ’
cause I will. I’ll fuck her rotten on top of y
e
r corpse. I’ll fuck her with y
e
r severed limbs
. You want that? Either one works for me, as long as somebody is keeping them happy.
”

Again with the
them
and
they
talk, psychotic babble that would land him in an institution instead of the electric chair. Somewhere deep down I knew that I could never live with that. I couldn’t let him go free, not now, not ever. Murder was the only option. I knew that. In a
way I’d known it since waking up in the cellar; I’d been kidding myself it would never come to it. I wasn’t afraid of it anymore, I knew something was owed to Tooth and Jamie
.
.
.
and myself, too.

As I reached the trees across the street, Skinny Man followed with the ax at the ready. Behind him loomed his house where I could only guess how many hikers and travelers had met their untimely ends in ungodly painful ways. It was almost as if I could look through the walls and see the ghosts of the unfortunate, Jamie’s dismembered torso on the ground in the dark, the empty chains where Tooth had suffered unthinkable pain.

“
What’s it gonna be, superhero?
”

Suddenly, I stopped. With an early afternoon breeze kissing my blood-streaked, tear-covered face, I watched him come at me a little slower, as if he was wondering what my plan was. There was no plan though, just that I knew I had to kill him. I knew once and for all I couldn’t just run away; I had to seize the opportunity that had been given to me. Given to me by the dice, given to me by years of reading comics, given to me by something higher than my understanding allowed. Given to me by what I had seen in the hallway upstairs.

Do it now, I told myself. Do it while he thinks you’re too weak and scared to attack. For Tooth, for Jamie. Don’t think about it, just do it. Do it for what he took from you, from this world.

And so I did.

From every ounce of my being, hatred welled up like an angry sea, and I rushed him head on. I heard myself scream,
“
NOOOOO!
”
but it sounded very far away. Remembering my trick on the boy at the liquor store, I pulled out the gun from my waistband as I charged, and tossed it to him. Reflexively, he went to catch it. But
before he could our bodies collided and flew to the ground and I cracked my forehead into his nose, felt his blood erupt into my eyes.

Without thinking, my hand went to the ax he was swinging and stopped its descent toward my neck. My other fist pounded his eyes, pounded his mouth, pounded his broken nose. His punches landed square on my face, though I barely took notice of them. In the melee, my teeth sank into his neck and tore out a chunk of flesh which I spit back into his face. Blinded and choking on his own blood, he flailed like an overturned beetle in a puddle, punching me and trying to get the ax free of my grip, trying to reach with his other hand for the gun which had slid to the curb. Another headbutt dazed him and I wrenched the ax free from his hand. He put both arms over his head to protect himself, and I saw that he was no longer laughing
—
he was terrified.

Our roles had reversed.

I got off of him and took a step back and just watched him for a few seconds. He took his hands away from his face and looked up at m
e, the gaping wound in his neck wet and wide
like a second mouth.

“
What are you gonna do, boy?
”
he said as blood bubbled out from the hole near his Adam’s apple. He forced a smile I knew was wreaking havoc with his nose, the same stupid grin he
sported
in the photo upstairs. Upstairs where something else had been with us.
“
You gonna kill me, here, in the middle of the road?
”

I looked around at the surrounding forests. The odds of anyone coming through here were slim. People were already at work, summer school buses had come and gone. We were alone.

“
You fucking mama’s boy. You fucking loser. What do you think you can do to me?
”

I didn’t even care enough to listen to him; I just kept seeing Tooth and Jamie lying in pools of blood. Those images would be with me forever, ruining my life until the day I died. Would I ever sleep again? Would I ever be happy? No matter what happened in the next few seconds, I would never be the same. I knew I was about to go somewhere I had never dreamed possible. All because of this man, and his sickness, his twisted insanity that
had
turned me inside out.

Let’s go to California.

Tooth’s one and only goal in life: to get away from the shitty
hand he’d been dealt
and start fresh. Now he wasn’t in California
;
h
e was in a shallow grave in some lunatic’s backyard. I had to do this for him.

“
Look at you, crying like a
pansy
. Shit, you can’t hurt me, you’re coming back to my place whether you like it or not.
”

True, I was still crying, but it wasn’t out of fear anymore
—
it was for what I had lost, what I would never regain. What I had been made into, like so many comic book heroes I had hung on my walls growing up. I was crying because I was now a monster.

Roger Huntington was dead.

With tears dripping into my bleeding lips, I reached into my pockets and pulled out the dice that Skinny Man had been so fond of.

“
We gonna play a game? That’s good, I like games,
”
he said.

I held them in my hand, two red dice that seemed at home in the smears of blood in my palm. Skinny Man was on his feet now, one hand over the hole in his neck, the other a fist by his side. He turned and saw the gun he’d been reaching for and began to hobble over to it. It was empty, but I didn’t care. I squeezed the dice against
the ax handle and cleared my mind of anything and everything. Except California
—
I would go there one way or another.

I limped over to Skinny Man and waited while he bent down to pick up the gun. With a triumphant,
“
Ah,
”
he grabbed it, spun around and pointed it at me.
And that’s when I swung the ax.

With a crunch, it wedged into the right side of his face, splitting open his cheek, lodging in his jawbone and exploding his teeth out toward the lawn. The thick blade locked his upper and lower jaws together so that the gurgle of surprise came straight from his throat. Both his body and the gun fell to the ground, bounced on the cement. I put my foot on his face and yanked out the ax, which came loose with a squeak. A fountain of blood spit
up
around
the white
,
exposed bone. He reached up for me, but I grabbed his hand, placed it on the road, and swung the ax at it. The blade went straight through with one clean cut. I tossed the hand out toward the middle of the road. The only sounds he seemed able to make were grunts and blood-filled coughs. I
grabbed
his other hand and swung the ax down
on
it, taking it off in two chops. He was looking at me with more fear than I had ever seen a man convey before, and I wanted to end him right there, but I owed something t
o Tooth and Jamie. So I swung the ax
at his bare chest and it sank into his breastplate with a thud. His body lurched, and he tried to grab me but his stumps couldn’t get a hold. I p
ulled the ax out and watched
blood ooze from the
fissure in the
bestiality tattoo
covering
his chest

“
You did this!
”
I screamed.
“
Why! Why did you do this!
”
I was crying so hard it was like looking through saran wrap.

Something over my shoulder caught his attention, and I spun around as a brown station wagon drove down the street. It came at us slowly, as if it was concerned about hitting us. Maybe it thought we were a couple kids
wrestling
or something. But then I saw recognition in the driver’s eyes, a small old lady with pearl white hair. She slammed on the gas and sped away.

I looked around me and saw the forest and the street, but at the same time I was having those flashes of California
—
the beach, the palm trees, so free, so warm, beckoning for me to stay, to never go back to New Hampshire. But I wasn’t finished.

Skinny Man sat up waving his arms like two snakes, his half-butchered head tilted to the side. My tears were stinging my eyes now, I could hear myself crying. I swung the ax again, swung it into his shoulder and began to take his arm off of his body. I had to pull it out and repeat it several times before I got through the bone, before the arm actually came off, after which I tossed it out into the street
near
the hands. His eyes glazed over and I knew he was near death, so I swung the ax at his head and sank it into his forehead over his right eye. The skull split wide open, the eye fell out. He fell back to the ground with the ax still protruding. His legs kicked a little, and he blinked at me with his left eye while his mouth tried to form words. I dropped the dice onto his chest and screamed. At first no sound came out, as if I’d forgotten how to use vocal cords. Then, in one giant rush of air, my scream erupted into the heavens above. I screamed so loud it hurt my own ears. I screamed until my muscles burned with exertion. I screamed with everything I had in me, purging myself of every ounce of sanity. I screamed for so long I tasted blood. I was still screaming, my head
thrown toward God, when the police car pulled to a stop several feet down the road.

CHAPTER 25

“
Get on the ground right now!
”

I kept screaming, my tears dripping on the cement like rain. The cop was ducked behind his car door, arms outstretched, with his gun
aimed
at me. He clicked the radio receiver on his shoulder and spoke quickly,
“
Officer needs
assistance
, now! I’ve got a ten-fifty
.
.
.
uh
.
.
.
a ten-thirty-seven
.
.
.
fuck,
I do
n’t know what I got! S
omebody just get to Highridge Way right now!
”